


London, 2015

by drinkbloodlikewine, whiskeyandspite



Series: Mistletoe - Holiday Gifts from wwhiskeyandbloodd [2]
Category: James Bond (Craig movies), James Bond (Movies), Skyfall (2012) - Fandom
Genre: Banter, Christmas Fluff, Established Relationship, Long-Distance Relationship, M/M, Q's cats - Freeform, Surprises, Ugly Sweaters
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-12-21
Updated: 2015-12-21
Packaged: 2018-05-07 23:20:33
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,652
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5474282
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/drinkbloodlikewine/pseuds/drinkbloodlikewine, https://archiveofourown.org/users/whiskeyandspite/pseuds/whiskeyandspite
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>
  <i>"I've got on a noxious Christmas jumper my mother gave me and a pair of your flannel pants.”</i>
</p><p>
  <i>“Not quite the answer I expected in response to a thinly veiled ‘what are you wearing’.”</i>
</p>
            </blockquote>





	London, 2015

**Author's Note:**

> Beta'd by our beloved [Noodle](http://noodletheelephant.tumblr.com/)!

The first beep startles Q from his murmuring to the cats. Crouched between them as they eat, his hand stills against Desmond’s back and he tilts his head.

The second beep sends him up the stairs two at a time, swinging through the doorframe, and skidding into his desk chair. He nearly loses his slippers in the process. 

The third beep is cut short when Q slides on his headset and opens communications, settling his reindeer-patterned jumper and plaid sleep pants with brisk flicks of his fingers.

“007,” he says, a little breathless.

“I hope I’m not interrupting.”

“Not at all. Everything alright?”

“Everything’s fine,” Bond says, and Q finds only then that his breath settles.

Though given clearance and security checks enough to set up coms in his home, Q rarely uses them. He prefers - when taking oversight of his agent’s missions - to stay in the office. It helps him focus. But with such little notice about this assignment, only a few days before, Q decided to indulge himself in working from home. It’s a simple operation, confirming satellite visuals with a man on the ground. His man on the ground, in particular.

“Not a formal call, then.”

“Hardly. I’d be remiss not to ring you on Christmas eve, wouldn’t I?”

Against the backs of his fingers, Q tucks a smile before clearing his throat to ease the sound of it from his voice. “You missed a miracle earlier. I thought Peter was going to pull the whole tree down before he reached the top of it. How is Tunisia?”

“Empty,” James replies and Q can hear the smile in his tone. “I miss my boys.”

Q barely controls his laugh at this, and settles more comfortably in his large chair. He had tried to hide his displeasure when James had told him he would work over Christmas. Their jobs rarely allowed for a holiday to be celebrated properly. But this feels almost like having him home.

He is safe.

He is here.

Even if only in voice.

“They miss you, too.”

“And you?”

Q hums a little, as if wavering in his answer, and then laughs lightly. “Of course I miss you. Peter’s an absolute miscreant when you’re away.”

“Is that the only reason?” Bond asks, with a chuckle of his own. “I see what I’m good for.”

“Taming cats and fixing fireplaces,” Q grins.

“It’s working, then?”

“As if it were new.”

“It is new,” James tells him. “The bricks weren’t even scorched.”

“How lucky I am, then, that you came around to remove the cover for me. The cats have scarcely left the hearth all day, nor I along with them. It’s dismal outside.”

“Tell me.”

Q’s cheeks burn at the gentle command. “Want me to put you on visual?”

Bond makes a sound, a very soft noise low in his throat, and one that Q knows horribly well despite whatever distances are between them. The quartermaster groans, chair creaking as he lets himself lean back in it.

“How did you manage -”

“Bad luck,” Bond offers, to a helpless, dour laugh from Q.

“Prick,” he sighs, leaning forward to tug back the curtains above his desk. “It’s raining.”

“Your powers of description never cease to amaze me, darling. It’s as if I’m there.”

“You were just here and it was raining then, too. It’s never not raining. The lights on the house across the yard look lovely, though, through the water.”

“And you?”

“Less wet, and also less lovely. I’ve got on a noxious Christmas jumper my mother gave me and a pair of your flannel pants.”

“Not quite the answer I expected in response to a thinly veiled ‘what are you wearing’.”

Q snorts, amused. “Would you rather have me describe for our poor transcriptionists that I’m wearing -” He drops his voice low and purring. “- nothing at all, 007.”

There’s a long pause through the headset before James finally asks, more than a little hopeful, “Are you?”

“No.”

A hum, then, in answer, and Q listens to James pace for a while, his heavy boots against uneven ground.

“Tell me something else, then.”

“Like what?”

“What are you having for dinner this evening?”

Q blinks a moment and checks the time, lips parting just as James laughs warmly against his ear.

“You _are_ having dinner this evening?”

“I lost track of time,” Q admits with a laugh. “Christmas has a way of making the days merge, have you noticed?”

“In every country.”

“It’s as though people forget everything, minds included. Spending unconscionable amounts of money on things no one needs, things that will end up being given away as soon as they’ve been opened.”

“Very cynical, Q,” James tells him, and Q laughs. 

“I’ve never understood the hype.”

“Then,” James suggests, “perhaps you and the boys could have hot chocolate by the fire. Something small to eat later, a sandwich perhaps, a slice of cake that Eve has inevitably donated on her rounds. You can take the headset to the first floor, can’t you?”

Q leans forward to check the charge, and then spins loose of his chair. “Shame you broke your visuals, Bond. That is, it’s a bloody shame you break as many things as you do, generally, but tonight of all nights -”

“I thought you said you never understood the hype.”

“Perhaps the past tense is accurate,” Q shrugs, slippers scuffling against the floor as he heads down the stairs.

“Tell me,” James says to him again, voice unfurling warm enough that Q’s smile widens, and his blush spreads.

“Only that it would be at least a little lovely, don’t you think, to be curled up by the fire together instead of with you in bloody Tunisia and me in dismal London, alone? Drinking mulled wine together, unwrapping ribbons for the cats,” he sighs. “God, 007, don’t make me be romantic over coms. I sound like a besotted schoolboy.”

“Perhaps in person, then.”

Q stops on the stairs, his agent’s voice carrying strangely through the headset. He looks towards the bedroom as the connection clicks dead, and for a moment Q feels as if he’s not fallen, but falling, weightless and breathless. He taps the switch off and on again, voice cracking.

“007?”

There’s only a brief pause before there’s a knock on the door and Q nearly jumps out of his skin. The cats are hardly disturbed, Desmond content to continue licking his bowl clean, Peter perked up and curious as both he and Q head towards the door.

It takes him a moment to unlock it, nervous with his heart hammering so damn hard against his chest that it actually aches. A moment, another, and he pulls the chain and undoes the locks in quick order and yanks the door open.

“I thought you were going to leave me in the rain all night,” James tells him, smiling from behind his thick heavy scarf.

“I bloody well should for the fright you just gave me,” Q exclaims, wide-eyed. “You’re lucky I don’t have clearance to keep a weapon, Bond, I - Tunisia?”

“I love it when you’re speechless,” James murmurs, stepping in chest to chest against Q when his quartermaster doesn’t step back. “Like a besotted schoolboy.”

Q takes him in, a familiar relief to see him whole after assignment made even more dizzying to see him unexpectedly. Here. Now.

Home for Christmas.

“Don’t you dare kiss me,” Q whispers, laughing. “I swear I’ll faint if you do.”

“God, we can’t have that,” James laughs, holding Q close instead, walking him backwards into the house and shutting the door before bending, feigning great distress as he does, to pick up Peter one-handed and hold him to his chest instead.

“I haven’t missed you,” James tells him earnestly, leaning in to press a kiss to his head instead as Q watches, delighted. “You can stop that purring right now.”

“He won’t,” Q tells him, nose wrinkling as he grins. “I won’t either, for that matter. You’ll be laid upon by us both for the whole of Christmas eve. You are staying, aren’t you?”

“Where else would I go?”

“Tunisia,” Q suggests with a shrug, dropping his hands to his sides, folding his arms, finally reaching to gently remove purring Peter and replace their cat with himself instead, leaning heavy against Bond. “Where you’re supposed to be,” he adds, before his eyes catch on the white-berried, waxy-leafed sprig tucked spryly into Bond’s buttonhole. “Is that -”

“A jacket,” James finishes for him, delighting in being deliberately obtuse. “A new one, I'm rather fond of it. And Tunisia,” he adds, holding Q close as he leans back against the door and lets his bags drop to the ground. “Has had its fill of me by now, I’m certain. I needn’t go back when the work’s done.”

He grins then, carding through Q’s hair with gloved hands. “Unless you would like to go with me?”

“No.”

“A nice plane ride -”

“James.”

“- just several hours away into Africa.”

“Piss off, 007,” Q mutters warmly, before pushing to slippered toes to kiss James. Again and again and again, little ones and deep ones, ones that make their hearts race and warm their pulses. Nevermind that Bond’s dripping on the floor, nevermind that Q’s jumper will be damp for hours, he wraps his arms around James’ neck and pulls himself upward, laughing softly when he’s lifted from his feet. “Don’t piss off,” he says then. “I didn’t mean that.”

“I’m sure M would appreciate my checking in immediately to HQ.”

“He can piss off,” Q decides, before propriety tugs him to correct, “for tonight anyway.”

“And tomorrow.”

“And tomorrow.”

“Because it’s Christmas.”

“Yes.”

“And I’m going to be here with you.”

“Please, yes.”

“Eating cake and drinking mulled wine.”

“I haven’t got any mulled wine.”

“Scotch, then,” James says, smile narrowing his eyes. “Very festive. Lovely jumper by the way.”

“I’ll tell my mother you said so,” sighs Q, before sinking into Bond’s kiss again.

James laughs, and peels off his gloves finger by finger to toss to the ground. He runs his hands through Q’s hair again, feeling the silkiness and warmth of it, how familiar it is, how lovely that familiarity is.

He is home. He is home and he would not give that up for the world.

“Coat,” he murmurs, nosing against Q, unwilling to let him go just yet. “Then boots, then sweater, then fire, please.”

“Yes.”

“Unfortunately we face a dilemma.”

“Oh?”

“I rather don’t want to let you go.”

“Quite the predicament,” Q agrees, running his hands over James where he can reach him, before settling on the buttons of his coat to work them free. “I suppose we will have to work around that.”

“I suppose we will,” James laughs, nuzzling against him.

Q twists his scarf free, looping it over his shoulder. The mistletoe finds its way behind his ear, berries bright against his temple. Only when he reaches midway down the buttons of Bond’s coat does the closeness of their bodies interfere, and Q laughs, helpless.

“007, I’m going to need you to take a deep breath, and hold it.”

James does, allowing just enough room for Q to reach the last two. He skims his hands up his tie and under his coat, up over his shoulders, and they find themselves stuck again. Q giggles, delighted, and shakes his head.

“Kiss me instead, and let me slide it off,” he decides.

They find a way, they always do. Shifting and turning, laughing and pressing close, touch after touch after touch, they manage to strip James down to just his shirt and trousers and socks, before they make their way into the warm house properly. James expertly avoids falling over as Desmond tangles between his legs, and bends to stroke behind his ears to greet him.

The place is just as he’d left it, only several days before. Piles upon piles of books by the window as they await a new bookcase to arrive after the holidays. The tree, barely but tastefully decorated by the window. The fireplace, crackling and warm that is almost all the light in this room bar the one by the armchair.

It’s cozy.

It’s nice.

It’s theirs.

“God, I’ve missed home,” James whispers.

“Now who’s besotted,” murmurs Q, dragging James atop him as he slips back onto the couch. They lay heavy together, both damp but warming by the breath that spills against the other’s lips as they kiss, deepening, bodies writhing in tandem to the tug of their mouths together. Q skims his fingers through Bond’s hair, delighting as his eyes dart to the mistletoe still behind Q’s ear.

“We’ll never make it to Moneypenny’s cake if you keep that there.”

Q’s rejoinder is cut short as Peter hops neatly not onto the couch, but onto James’ back directly. Bond groans, laying with all his weight on Q, who sputters with laughter.

“The great 007,” he gasps, “felled by a feline.”

Peter makes himself comfortable against his favourite person and settles, and there is little that James or Q can do about it at all. Neither seem much inclined to. For a while, they just doze, Peter atop James atop Q, Desmond contented to curl into a little bun on the carpet and have Q’s free hand stroke through his fur as he purrs.

They are a ridiculous little family. James would have no other.

“The assignment went well,” James tells Q after a while. “Surprisingly easy. In a way that doesn’t suggest danger so much as lack of care.”

“But it’s done?”

“It’s done. The rest…”

“008 can handle it. It’s his job.”

“I can’t believe I agreed to babysit for the man,” James grumbles, but he merely shifts to rest his arms against Q and himself more comfortably on top.

“But how did you manage it and I didn’t know? I assume you got the photographs we needed.”

“Of course I did. As to the first,” James says, shrugging a little. “Someone on hand that I asked not to let you know just yet. You’ll have a notification soon.”

“And they agreed?” Q asks, eyes wide. “Who was it? That’s grievous, Bond, that’s not on at all -”

“Someone sympathetic to me wanting to surprise you for Christmas,” he says, pausing meaningfully, “eve.”

Q groans, grinning despite himself. Part of him - the neurotic, protocol-adhering, rules-minding, apple-polishing part of him - wants to harp about the violation of procedure involved in this, that raises serious doubts about the efficacy of an organization that while being buried in secrecy prides itself on internal transparency. Part of him wants to do that.

Most of MI6’s quartermaster, however, is altogether too pleased to be pinned beneath the weight of his agent. And their cat.

“How easy it would be to fell us all,” Q murmurs, nuzzling against James’ temple, draping kisses against his cheek, “by simply preying on our shockingly romantic natures.”

“Truly,” James agrees, eyes narrowing in delight. After a moment he reaches back to hold Peter gently as he sits up, lowering the cat to the sofa safely before standing up. He stretches, a full-body groan-inducing thing that clicks the little bones in his back. With a sigh he lets his arms fall and turns to look at Q with a smile.

“Dinner,” he murmurs, bending to caress Q’s cheek as he kisses him and plucks the little sprig of mistletoe from behind his ear. “And a drink, I think.”

Q grasps James’ arm before he can withdraw it, levering himself up with a helpful tug from Bond to bring him to his feet. Desmond occupies his place a moment later with a trill of pleasure, and Q wraps his arm with James’ as they make their way to the kitchen.

“Will you think less of me, or how seriously I take our work -”

“Never.”

“- if I tell you that I was genuinely a little sad that you wouldn’t be here for our first Christmas together?”

“Only a little?” Bond asks, escorting Q along with languid, almost formal strides. “That does make me think less, yes.”

“Very sad,” Q allows, laughing in gentle exasperation. “But you’ll be pleased to know that it avoided our having to attend dinner at my parents’ house, when I told them we both had to work.”

“At the bank?”

“Very important end of year filings.”

“Filing what?”

“Hell if I know,” Q laughs, before turning James to face him as James switches on the kitchen light. “I don’t know if we’ll be able to avoid it next year, though.”

“We’ll need to study up on our banking jargon then, I think,” James tells him, keeping his own delight at being invited to a family Christmas tamped down. He can’t remember the last time he had had a proper one. With his aunt, perhaps, with the school maybe, but he can’t remember the last Christmas he shared with his parents before he lost them. He hopes he might some day later.

He kisses Q’s hair instead, a deep and deliberate thing, and turns to set the kettle boiling for tea as he takes whatever he can find from the fridge. Something simple, he thinks, garlic potatoes and a cool salad. Something quick to make and quick to eat so they can enjoy the rest of their Christmas tangled on the couch, where they will inevitably fall asleep with their cats slithered in between them.

“Do you know, I found my buttonhole growing down the street,” James tells Q after a moment, smiling as he passes him the peeled potatoes to chop up. “Imagine the congregation of teenagers there later this evening. Now, even, taking advantage of the silly thing.”

Q dutifully tends to cutting the potatoes into even chunks, bemused by the thought of couples snogging under soggy mistletoe in the rain. “So you climbed up and took it?”

“Just a bit of it, and just a stretch, but if it makes me sound more daring to have scaled an enormous oak to get it, then I’d rather you believe that.”

“You’re daring enough without risking your neck on tree limbs,” Q assures him.

During the time that they cook, during the time that they eat, they are rarely ever not in contact. Shoulder to shoulder at the counter, lips against cheeks and temples in passing. Fingers skimming the other’s arm, toes touching beneath the table. Bond fills Q in on the details of his assignment’s completion. Q fills Bond in on the goings-on of their cats. They finish their food and clear the dishes and hardly a heartbeat passes where one isn’t looking towards the other.

These kinds of moments aren’t to be taken for granted by men like them.

Both agree to leave the dishes for morning, and while James cuts them a slice of Moneypenny’s Christmas cake, Q pours them both several fingers of scotch. They reconvene by the fireplace, their cats occupying fully half the sofa, but the agent and his quartermaster are pressed closely enough that neither mind the couch’s conquering.

Q sits against the arm of it, legs over James’ and stretched out towards the cats. The cake is filling and heavy, just on the right side of too sweet. It tastes delightful, not like the packed pound boxes of the stuff from the shops, covered in sugary icing and tasting of old mattress and brandy. They will have to have her over, properly over, sometime.

Perhaps once they set the living room back in order after James’ impromptu fireplace upgrade. Certainly in the new year.

They share the cake from one plate with two forks, lazily slipping it from the utensils as they sip their scotch alongside. Neither speak now, because neither really want to, cradled as they are - close and safe and together. Once the cake is finished, the plate and forks get set to the floor and just to the side, so neither step on it as they stumble to bed later, or the bathroom in the middle of the night should they sleep here.

Without a word, James holds up the little sprig again, pulled from only God knows where. He holds it above them both, smiling at Q when he narrows his eyes at him.

“You could just ask,” Q scolds him, failing to suppress his smile, and so hiding it against the backs of his fingers until he can restrain himself to the proper expression of imperiousness. He raises a brow.

Bond raises one in return.

“Mr. Q,” James begins, to a snorting laugh from Q before he composes himself once more and his agent begins again. “Mr. Q, will you grace me with a Christmas kiss?”

“It’s still only Christmas eve.”

“Will you grace me with a Christmas eve kiss?”

“You didn’t even say please.”

“Exasperating, infuriating, exquisite quartermaster Q,” Bond says, “kiss me before I take one for myself.”

Nose wrinkled in delight, eyes crinkled with a grin he can’t suppress anymore, Q wriggles further down into the couch and laughs. “Proceed, 007.”

James does, their lips brushing softly once before closing firmly together. When they part it’s to allow their tongues to pass, slipping tangled together as their voices entwine in a moan.

“You’ve not yet told me my assignment,” James whispers, breath cool across Q’s kiss-flushed lips.

“Do pay attention,” Q murmurs, affecting his instructional voice as best he can despite being full of Christmas cheer and scotch. “Your objectives for this mission are to kiss me until we either shag or fall asleep, and then we wake on Christmas day, to do the same again. Understood?”

James grins, eyes narrowed with it and cheeks warm. He sets his glass to the ground and takes Q’s to set it just as safely away.

“Sir, yes sir,” he murmurs, pressing a hand to Q’s cheek before he kisses him again.


End file.
